UN staff, teachers fear being targeted by IOF after UN-school massacre

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
14 Sep 2024 21:29

UNRWA's senior deputy director says that one colleague said that they're not wearing the UNRWA vest anymore because they feel that that "turns them into a target".

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A UNRWA worker in the courtyard of a UN-run school turned into a shelter for forcibly displaced Palestinians in the al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on October 18, 2023 (AFP)

A senior official from the United Nations expressed concern on Saturday that UN employees and teachers in Gaza now fear being targeted after the massacre committed by "Israel" in a school sheltering forcibly displaced Palestinian families earlier this week.

On Wednesday, the Israeli occupation army bombed the UN al-Jaouni School in the al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing 18 people, including six members of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

According to the Gaza Media Office, the massacre at al-Jaouni School marks the 47th carried out by the occupation in the al-Nuseirat camp, which is currently home to over a quarter of a million residents and forcibly displaced individuals.

"One colleague said that they're not wearing the UNRWA vest anymore because they feel that that turns them into a target," the organization's senior deputy director Sam Rose told AFP in an online interview on Saturday after visiting the bombed shelter in al-Nuseirat.

The UN coworkers had gathered in a classroom for a meal after work when the Israeli strike demolished part of the building, reducing it to a scorched pile of rubble.

"A son of one of the staff had brought a meal into the building," Rose said.

"They were eating when the [Israeli] bomb hit."

The occupation army claimed responsibility for the airstrike, alleging it was a "precision strike" against Resistance fighters.

Rose mentioned that the Israeli remarks further demoralized the UN staff still present at the school, where thousands of Palestinians have taken refuge.

The ongoing Israeli genocidal war has forcibly displaced at least once nearly all of Gaza's 2.4 million population.

"They (UN employees) were particularly angry by the allegations that had been made as to the involvement of their colleagues in extremist and terrorist activities," Rose said.

"They felt that this really was a stain on the memory of dear colleagues, dear friends," he added, describing the mood as "bereft" and "desperate".